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Topic:	The Debate Over Torture
Posted:	Wednesday, September 20, 2006
Author:	Bob Ciaffone
Email:	thecoach@chartermi.net
	I recently watched a debate on television about a subject that I never expected to see controversy over in my lifetime. Should we have a governmental policy of torturing prisoners under our control in order to extract information from them? Prisoners sometimes get abused, even those in US custody, but never before has our country done so as a matter of presidential policy. You may quibble over whether the word “torture” is appropriate; many do. It is okay with me if we use terms such as “treat very abusively,” or “put under extreme duress.” When we look at what is being done to prisoners to get information out of them, it should be obvious to all except blind people like Bush and Cheney that what we are doing is totally cruel and un-American. Keep in mind that many of the people being made to suffer this maltreatment are people who were not caught red-handed, but were turned over to the US in return for a bounty paid to the informer, so it’s likely that plenty of them are innocent. Here are some of the interrogation techniques being used with presidential approval: (1) Holding a person underwater until they think they are going to drown. (2) Immobilizing a prisoner in a painful physical position for many hours at a time. (3) Stripping a prisoner naked, then turning a cell’s air conditioning device onto high for so long that it produces hypothermia. (4) Depriving prisoners of sleep by piping extremely loud noises into their cell. There is some debate over whether such harsh interrogation methods produce useful results. Some say no, but suppose they do. Devices that are clearly torture like the thumbscrew might produce even more results. So just the fact that we can extract information by prisoners with some technique is not enough to condone its use. Our country’s present leaders have never gotten the message that the War on Terror is a war for the hearts and minds of people. Do things to make many people hate you and you produce a war without an end. Treat the enemy in a harsh and inhumane manner, and you create retaliation against your own people. Call irregulars who are out of uniform as people who are unworthy of Geneva Convention protection and create a hell that can be applied to your own undercover agents. I saw on that TV program a Bush mouthpiece, National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley, squirming to evade nearly every pertinent question put to him by the moderator. Here are some of those questions that went completely unanswered. “What interrogation techniques are we talking about?” Hadley said that he could not discuss these techniques because to do so would be a breach of national security. This was from a man who claims the government is trying to define just what techniques are acceptable. I did not become aware of these techniques by some underground source disclosing them; I learned of them by reading newspapers, buying magazines, and watching TV. Who was he kidding? “What about Americans who are not uniformed combatants such as CIA agents?” Hadley had said that the people being held by us were not subject to the Geneva Convention because they did not wear a uniform. He completely evaded this question. I wish there had been this follow-up to the previous question, instead of letting Hadley change the subject. “How would you feel if a foreign government detained a CIA agent and interrogated him using some of the techniques our US detainees have been interrogated?” Concern over how future American detainees may be treated by someone else is one of the biggest drawbacks of using abusive interrogation techniques. It is not just Democrats that are complaining about Bush prisoner maltreatment. Thank God we have a few Republicans with a conscience like John McCain, Colin Powell, and Lindsey Graham, who are willing to speak out against their own party’s leaders about such abhorrent behavior by their country. These men are patriots with extensive military experience who can speak authoritatively. McCain was tortured many times when he was a prisoner in Vietnam. But where are the rest of the Republicans? Invisible at best. Many openly support detainee abuse. How can you vote for any Republican who is so immoral as to remain silent when our government turns barbarous? How can you call yourself a moral person who believes in the Golden Rule if you are not willing to treat foreign detainees as you would wish American detainees to be treated by others? Americans, speak up at the polling booth to get back a government that upholds American values!

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